Hard Time by Cara McKenna Read Free Book Online Page B

personal stuff. Man doesn’t want just anybody reading those kinds of thoughts.”
    I lowered the page, saw it fluttering in my quaking hand and closed it in the notebook. “Fine.”
    “I didn’t get to sign it.”
    “Oh.”
    He nodded to the pad, raised his eyebrows. I submitted, pushing the page and the pencil across the tabletop. It was my turn to watch his hand as it formed two short, slow, careful words. Then he slid everything back.
    “Thanks . . .” His eyes dropped to my chest, but it was my ID badge he scanned, not my breasts. “Annie.” He said it low, made more of breath than sound, as if he were telling himself a secret.
    Ms. Goodhouse,
I should’ve said, but the only correction I managed was, “Anne.” My parents called me Annie, and my aunts and grandparents and a couple of close friends, but that was all. Not strangers. Not this man whose first name I didn’t even know. Whose crimes I didn’t wish to hear about. Whose desires I’d just traced with shaking fingers. “I’ll see you next week.”
    And he was gone, long legs striding for the door. This time he didn’t look back.
    I tucked the letter away in my bag, not daring to see what he’d written.
    I won’t look. I’ll keep it closed in this notebook and not read it, and if next week we speak and he doesn’t have an address, I’ll throw it out. I’ll burn it. I’ll do whatever—anything except read it.
    I read it in my car.
    My butt met the driver’s seat, my hands went to my bag, and I slid the page out, fingers shaking.
    Darling,
    I missed you since our last visit. A few minutes a week with you is almost more cruel than it’s worth.
    I miss you every minute we’re apart, and watch the clock every morning when I think I might be seeing you again. I miss how you smell, like spring and grass. There’s not much grass here.
    I miss your face, and the way you smile sometimes. I want to make you smile like that. I miss your voice. The way you talk. I wish I could see you, away from here.
    I wish we could be together, in ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years. Sometimes, when I see you . . . Sometimes I can’t even listen to what you’re saying. All I can do is watch your mouth. I watch your lips and I think about kissing you when I’m alone at night. Though I’m never really alone, here. But I imagine I am. Alone with just you. I think about your mouth, and about kissing you. And other things. Sometimes I watch your hands. I watch your hands and imagine them on me.
    Yours,
    Eric

Chapter Four
    I thought about terrible things, that night.
    About a slim iron bed frame, and a man’s long, strong body laying atop threadbare covers in the heat of summer. About the waistband of prison-issue pajamas, pushed down by a big, tanned hand to expose an erection—thick, flushed, ready.
    A fist stroking slowly to start, then quicker. Rougher.
    And that face. Handsome features pained, dark eyes shut.
    For the first time in months, my own hand slid low. Me and my hand in my lonely bed, in my lonely room, on this lonely night . . . wondering if a man was thinking of me and doing the same twenty miles away.
    Though I’m never really alone, here.
    How did that work, I wondered, hitting Pause on the scene. Were convicts discreet, to keep from pissing off their cellmates, or did a man just do what he had to do, and so did everyone else, so who cared? The former, I hoped, preferring the civility of it. Or perhaps the desperation of it. Of Eric Collier stifling his moans and grunts, tensing his body to keep his motions subtle. Of his lips forming two soundless syllables.
    Annie.
    He’d be thinking about things he couldn’t give himself.
Ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years.
The wet heat of a hungry mouth. The wet heat of my . . . which word would be use?
Pussy,
probably. Or
cunt
. Yes, cunt. Blunt and ugly, to match his world. I’d flinch if he said it to me, and wasn’t that what I wanted, really? No candy coating